Caller name may now be authenticated to a called party to prevent caller identity spoofing, as described in Applicant's co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/699,330, entitled Caller Name Authentication to Prevent Caller Identity Spoofing, which was filed on Jan. 30, 2007, the entire specification of which is incorporated herein by reference.
However, under certain circumstances when the authenticated name of a calling party is displayed on the called party's telephone, it may confuse the called party and make them suspicious. As is well known, many companies now outsource certain services. It is not uncommon for a company to outsource either sales or support services, or both. Consequently, if a customer places a call for assistance with a product or service from sales or support of “Company X”, the customer naturally expects a return call from the Company X. However, if Company X has outsourced their sales or support services to company Y (perhaps, in another country), or a support specialist for Company X calls from an outside location (e.g., an IP telephone application on a laptop computer), the authenticated caller name may display “Company Y”, or “John Doe” while the caller is alleging that they are making the call in response to the Company X matter. Since a call from neither Company Y nor John Doe was expected, the called customer may become suspicious and refuse to take the call. Furthermore, Company Y may be a call center that serves several other companies besides Company X, so the customer may become even more suspicious if they receive two or more calls from the same unexpected source in response to apparently unrelated inquiries.
Of course, it would be possible for company X to register its caller name “Company X”, as explained in Applicant's above-identified co-pending patent application, and give the certificate it was issued (along with the corresponding private key) to company Y and/or to roaming employees. However, that is very ill advised because Company X would thus lose control over the use of its registered caller name. For example, if an outsource contract is terminated or expires, company Y would be still able to authenticate to called parties as “Company X”. Likewise, an employee who left the employ of Company X could continue to place calls that were authenticated as originating from Company X.
It is therefore highly desirable to provide transparent caller name authentication for authorized third party callers that permits a registered owner of a caller name to retain control over use of that caller name.